A Valentines Day Shooting in the Other Washington

Last Friday afternoon, Makayla Darden, an eight-year-old girl, was hit by a stray bullet in Southeast Washington. Unlike Trayvon Martin, she was not instantly adopted by President Obama.

Two men, Karie Brown, 19, and Nathaniel Patten, 21, also of Southeast Washington, have been arrested and charged with assault with intent to kill while armed.

Last Friday was St. Valentine’s Day.

There were 91 murders in the District of Columbia last year (not counting the 12 people gunned down at the Navy Yard). The figure is up from 2012 (when Washington ranked eighth in murders per capita among American cities), but down from previous years, which may dampen the public’s interest in crime news from Washington’s more crime-ridden neighborhoods. Crime, whether it’s up or down, takes place primarily “somewhere else,” in the . . . lower-class neighborhoods of Washington: not the part where President Obama sends his children to school.

Government in Washington, D.C., known as “self-government,” would be a late-night television joke to someone with no feelings for what can accurately be described as the underclass. The government’s corruption and incompetence are as obvious and permanent as the two large warts on your grandmother’s nose—and it’s just not terribly polite to talk about them either.

But the dysfunction is real. And the Washington Post (give it at least one star) even has a feature: “D.C. corruption scandals: A primer.” Click on any button and learn how the city fathers steal from the people.

But of course that’s not street crime. It’s only thievery, and does thievery, even high-level thievery, really affect ordinary people? Can’t we spin the facts, the way former mayor Marion Barry did years ago, when he said Washington would have one of the lowest crime rates in the country—if it weren’t for the murders.

Let thieves be thieves: we adults care—with Hillary—about the children.

So how are the children doing? According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2011 Washington, D.C., had the worst high-school graduation rate in the country.

Fortunately for President Obama’s children, their school’s graduation rate is 100 percent. He can afford the tuition of $35,288 (which includes a hot lunch). He can also afford to be relentlessly ideologically opposed to school choice. As is, you will not be surprised to learn, the National Education Association (the teachers’ union), for which school choice is a cross fashioned from garlic.

As the figures show, violent crime is trending down in the District. But probably not illegitimacy, now so rampant as to be normal—70 percent among blacks, almost three times the level of the 1960s. Today, it’s not illegitimacy that’s déclassé. It’s the word “illegitimacy” itself. “Out-of-wedlock” is the quaint mot du jour. Liberal Progressives (President Obama’s forebears), who in the 1960s promoted a reinterpretation of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children law, may not have caused the increase in illegitimacy, but they made having illegitimate children financially viable, even profitable.

A search of the news accounts of Makayla Darden’s shooting turns up no mention of a father. Only a mother, a grandmother, and an aunt. The statistics tell us that even if her father and mother are together, it’s not likely that her friends live in two-parent homes.

Fortunately for President Obama’s children, their parents are married.

A few years ago, a middle-class white person asked a middle-class black one in the adjacent bus seat whether he had any thoughts on why the black community they had just visited was so dysfunctional. The black person looked back in astonishment: “My mother is a lawyer. My father is a doctor. I have absolutely nothing in common with these people.”

One has the sense that President Obama might have been the person occupying that seat.

Meanwhile, Makayla Darden fights for her life in a Southeast Washington hospital, in critical but stable condition. And if she recovers, she will return to a community President Obama seems to have absolutely nothing in common with.

By the way, how did you spend St. Valentine’s Day?

Daniel Oliver is a Senior Director of White House Writers Group in Washington, D.C. He served as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Ronald Reagan.

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8 Responses to A Valentines Day Shooting in the Other Washington

Aside from Mr Oliver displaying his gross ignorance of the history of DC politics and political history, of course. He wouldn’t recognize a reference to the Hannifi Muslim takeover of the District Building or be able to position it in time to the nearest quarter-century.

Prehaps he could explain the reference to the tag line on DC license plates. As a political appointee in an earlier administration he has certainly played a large part in why that particular saying is on DC plates.

Thank you for this article.
I’m writing from the Deep South, but this sounds real familiar.
Our former school district had an over 40% highschool dropout rate.There were so many 11-15 year old pregnant middleschool girls that a fulltime faculty position was created to teach them. My son’s homeroom teacher took that job.These were largely poor, African American girls who’d been molested by much older men.
Noone seemed to care or be outraged by the situation.I’ve heard comments that it was just a part of the culture,what can you expect, etc.

Just like with the Clintons and Chelsea, the Obamas are a ‘special circumstance’ that rises above party or ideology.
I honestly don’t believe the Clintons or the Obamas selected Sidwell Freinds. The Secret Service did, when Bill Clinton became the nominee it’s quite likely an agent sat down with them and said ”You’re not going to do what Jimmy Carter did (putting Amy in a DC public school) that’s simply not going to happen. Here are your options: Sidwell Friends or a private tutor in the White House – NOTHING ELSE”
Do you think the Secret Service cares about their education? Please, their purpose is to protect the First Family at any and all costs.

“Last Friday afternoon, Makayla Darden, an eight-year-old girl, was hit by a stray bullet in Southeast Washington. Unlike Trayvon Martin, she was not instantly adopted by President Obama.

“Two men, Karie Brown, 19, and Nathaniel Patten, 21, also of Southeast Washington, have been arrested and charged with assault with intent to kill while armed.”

Do you think, perhaps, that the content of the third sentence, mentioning that two men have already been arrested and charged with the crime, might account, at least in part, for the difference in the way that President Obama has treated the two cases, alluded to snidely in the second sentence?

As I seem to recall, when Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed, was accosted and killed by a White man, who was armed, no arrest was made, even though the police were aware that the killer was armed and the victim was not. In my view, it is not illegitimate for the President to react differently to two cases, when in one cases it seems as if the machinery of law enforcement appears to be seeking justice for the victim, while in the other case it appeared as if it was not so doing, and that racism had played some part in that failure. Indeed, in my view, it is a cheap shot, and nothing more, to pretend otherwise.

If Washington is anything like Albany, NY there are members of the black community organized around reducing violence and getting guns off the street. I don’t know whether they have similar initiatives around family structure, but personally, I think the best solution to most social problems would be good-paying jobs.

“Let thieves be thieves: we adults care—with Hillary—about the children.”

I guess, she believes the village is not the local community but the federal and state governments. Never so grave an error as turning welfare into a bait and switch game. Where the adults with children — women, claim victimhood and the government becomes their daddy.

Except that Sec Hillary’s government daddy is no better than the daddy and husband the children don’t have. At every turn since the mid 1960′s government has been undermining the role and value of men and fatherhood. A cursory daddy’s success look at government daddy’s success in the Appalachian mountains, the Mississippi delta, Arkansa valley, the plains of Idaho, the cities of detroit, NYC, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Chicago, and there in DC as almost everywhere has been abysmal failures. Perpetual federal fatherlessness

White intellectual women have led this unslaught in the name of — well who knows what –

control their body’s

woman here me roar as I kill children in wombs

equality in the workplace w/o ever having to earn that equality by paying the price minus the complaining if

harassment they feel so it must be true

Now as the foundation of family have actually eroded beneath them the complaint is: a lack of male leadership and responsibility. Never mind the fact, of this none so noticeable intriguing bit —

that educational quality has also decreased, despite women in numbers never experienced in education, the big youth concern — bullying. Shouldn’t the inclusion of women have decreased this

the income gaps between rich and everyone else has become a cavaran as well as the means to get rich it h despite women moving through and up the corporate ladder

Women in power are apparently just as likely to engage in harassment as their male counter parts

The women in Congress said not a peep about torture — ohh enhanced interrogation techniques

Female corporate heads and executives shouted no alarm about the fiscal mismanagement going on in and amongst the financial industry and were all too happy to participate reaping the benefits.

I don’t decry the female leadership or improved opportunities. But it came at a cost, an unnecessary cost and the cost has been this. Women have demanded everything but the removal of chivalry so they could avoid accountability for their behavior.

They want to drink with the boys but they don’t want to be held accountable for what happens when they are as intoxicated as their male counterparts.

They want military rank and power, but they don’t want to be in battle units as demonstrated by the rather weak showing in women choosing combat arms duty, unless it is some snazzy technical gig like flying or some elite service,

They want to run education, but they don’t want to deal with difficult students, hence the unprecedented removal of boys, especially black boys (the black boys get labeled as impulse control problems— (the white boys get drugs and psychiatric emotional care) antebellum is alive and well all across america.

There’s no reason any woman who doesn’t want a child should have one, no one is stopping a woman from abstinance or using birth control (controlling their bodies), yet when she gets pregnant she wants the man she was having pleasure with to fork up the dough not only for the child but for her — why I have no idea — he contracted for some bliss not children, why is her failure thier burden —

Men in the service don’t say it out loud as it is politically incorrect, but women in combat zones have made duty more hazardous for both, apparently women expect men to take a bullet for them still and carry their gear afterward — so much for equality

And now we come to it, the quintessential nexus for young innocent Makayla who had to fight for her life in a hospital because Sec. Hillary Clinton and her pals have convinced men that they in fact not equal, especially if they are black. That Little Makayla’s life is forfeit by a cadre of women whose white skin and liberal education have given them lots of power but very little practical thinking skills or social accountability.

Which is why Maykala, you are but a foot stool on their way to more power they will not use on your behalf. But they will be more than happy to provide you with a daddy who will serve your interests less than the man who is your biological father. Who should have done everything in his power to protect his little girl.

But we no longer honor poor fathers . . . no longer honor men of less intellect who struggle to feed family. Instead we blame them.

Maykala, if you ever live to read this. Here’s what I want you to know. I am on your side and my heart for you is this.

That you get grades sufficient enough to make your way be it a college degree or not.

That you meet a man who does the same.

That the two of you hold out until marriage before engaging in behavior that leads to children and if incapable of that self control — prevent such from occurring until married and that upon having a child you together provide and prepare that child for a life of integrity and substance.

That the two of you fight for each other more than against. That you eschew a world that blathers on about equality but only intends it for a few.

That when you are old, you will be able smile with no small pride at what you and husband have added to our community. And that sweet peace and satisfaction reign knowing that both of you —

served as shields from bullets and government daddies.

I am sorry that I and others permitted something as ground breaking as affirmative action to become a play toy of the wealthy elites to side step the history of discrimination by lowering standards and opportunities for their wives, daughters and mistresses while at same time entering court rooms to demolish that correction for your father father and now your husband.

I am sorry that I have not made the world a better place for you. It saddens me to no end . . . it causes me to choke on my own failings, because they somehow they are a failure of my obligation as a US citizen. I cannot explain the Sec. Clintons, Sen. Barbara Boxers, or Sen Nancy Pelosi’s of this world who make money from stocks entities they are suppose to oversee. I have no idea why they lack a nurturing heart for you, your mother and the men with whom they associate with.

I can only tell you this, get as much knowledge as you can. Entertain men who treat you more valuable than they do themselves. Walk with your head held high knowing that the future is before and while it is full of women who care not for you as they build a career on your name — you too have a say in your future — despite all that is against you . . .

there are worthwhile models: men and women, black and white and you will know them because they will never suggest that the government be your daddy or your husband.

(save but for rare emergencies)
Reject the government daddy they offer in all possible ways —

I think we do need to remember that we didn’t simply extend government benefits to single mothers, we made being a single mother a prerequisite for receiving government assistance. In practice, this meant not just that single motherhood became more acceptable, for some women it meant forcing single parenthood on them as a requirement of surviving if their partner was an unreliable source of income (as many African American men were due to discrimination, segregated housing and the like). So the current state of fatherlessness which prevails in low income communities isn’t just a result of increased acceptance of single parenthood. it is at least in part the result of government policies which went so far as to send social workers into the homes of welfare recipients to look for signs that a man (the father?) might be living there.